Get off my case! Rethinking litigated terms

Are you hesitating to change a legal expression in something you’ve written because the term you’ve used has a whole stack of case law behind its interpretation? Just stop for a minute and think about what that means.

The case law exists because someone either:

had trouble understanding what the term meant

thought it worth going to court to argue for a meaning beyond the obvious.

Every court case is further evidence that the term isn’t clear. So the bigger the stack, the stronger the argument for finding another term.